Ethical Obligations: Rights-Based and Virtue Ethics
Approaches to Determining Ethical Obligations
Rights-Based Ethics
Being ethical is acting within our rights and according others the right to act within their rights.
- Negative rights correspond to liberties.
- Positive rights correspond to entitlements to benefits from society.
Robert Audi, author of Business Ethics and Ethical Business, writes that the main criticism of rights-based ethics is that it is too narrow and too minimally demanding on us as individuals. Is it always possible to have situations where “I can act within my rights, and leave you alone “to act within your rights?” Are there situations where one person’s rights mean “taking liberties” from another person? How is such an ethical situation resolved?
“The word liberty has to be understood in all of its connotations, including pejorative senses as ‘taking liberties’. All liberties, in fact, threaten each other: one limits another, and later succumbs to a further rival.” Fernand Braudel (1902 – 1985).
What does an atmosphere of public trust have to do with preserving rights-based ethics?
Rights-based ethics is closely associated with the moral philosophy of libertarianism. There are a number of people who are credited as “founders” of libertarianism, and the term means different things to different people in terms of both economics and ethics. Robert Nozick (1938 – 2002) is possibly the most influential moral philosopher right now when it comes to defining what libertarianism is. I invite every “deep thinker” in this class to take a closer look at Nozick and his view on ethics in this handout on Owlnet. Libertarianism and ethics – a moral history of the last forty years?
Virtue Ethics
Virtue ethics merely asks us to concentrate on being good persons. Moral traits are more important than moral rules or moral actions.
- We become ethical ourselves by watching others who are unmistakably ethical persons and making them role models for our own behavior.
“Virtue ethics would have us ask both what kind of person we would want to be and how we want to be seen by those we care about, say friends and family. Who wants to be (correctly) seen as cheap, insensitive or even indifferent to other people’s suffering? Who does not want to be seen as generous, caring, and fair?” Audi, page 18.
Aristotle is the foundational thinker of virtue ethics. In his work, A 21st Century Ethical Toolbox, Oxford University Press, 2001, Anthony Weston summarized the ethical thoughts of Aristotle. Aristotle wrote that one way virtue is expressed is through craft — “purposeful” work which has “excellence” as its goal. In terms of ethics, with each profession follows its own core values. This is the basis for professional ethics. Another way that virtue is expressed, according to Aristotle, is through “the Golden Mean” – balance and the avoidance of extremes. The virtue of courage, for example, is a balance between cowardice and rashness. A courageous person is prudent, not thoughtless in action. Aristotle called for people to show character – to teach virtue by example. That is the only way this form of ethics can really be taught. These virtues are considerable whenever each of us faces an economic dilemma. We cannot express all of these virtues at the same time, but must decide which value is most important.